The latest BOTI comic, or graphic novel? I just picked up the latest GN ... at least I think it's the latest. Nice to see Magatsu again, but I'm starting to feel slightly overwhelmed with new characters. Fortunately, characters tend to have a very short half-life in this series, so I'm sure most of them won't last long. ;)
About the movie ... I really don't think there's anything wrong with liking it. It was visually very beautiful, and there were definitely things I liked. (Calcifer!) In the end, though, the saccharine-ness spoiled it for me, especially compared to the book. I think I could have dealt with that aspect of the movie a lot better if the book hadn't been so ... well, cynical isn't really the right word, but, I guess, unromantic? About as unromantic as you can get in a fantasy romance, anyway. ;) And that was a big part of its charm -- here you had this completely prosaic girl without a romantic illusion in her head, and this guy who's a total ass (if a charming and likeable ass) and they fall in love. Then the movie turns it into a pretty straightforward "Oh, my hero!" love story and I just ... had a big problem accepting that. I was expecting to have things cut out of the book and switched around. I could have dealt with that. It's the fact that what they ended up with was, in my view, so much *less* ... so much less than the book, and so much less than it could have been.
And, yeah, it was doubly disappointing because it was Miyazaki and I haven't felt in the past that his movies had so much trouble walking the line of realistic vs. sentimental. Have you seen Porco Rosso? Now why couldn't this movie have had the same funny-serious-cynical-fairy-tale tone as that one? Sigh... I remember finding out that Studio Ghibli was going to do the movie, and being all excited because I thought that it would be done *right* -- even if it didn't match the book very well, it would be a really good movie. But I didn't really like the movie, and that saddened me.
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About the movie ... I really don't think there's anything wrong with liking it. It was visually very beautiful, and there were definitely things I liked. (Calcifer!) In the end, though, the saccharine-ness spoiled it for me, especially compared to the book. I think I could have dealt with that aspect of the movie a lot better if the book hadn't been so ... well, cynical isn't really the right word, but, I guess, unromantic? About as unromantic as you can get in a fantasy romance, anyway. ;) And that was a big part of its charm -- here you had this completely prosaic girl without a romantic illusion in her head, and this guy who's a total ass (if a charming and likeable ass) and they fall in love. Then the movie turns it into a pretty straightforward "Oh, my hero!" love story and I just ... had a big problem accepting that. I was expecting to have things cut out of the book and switched around. I could have dealt with that. It's the fact that what they ended up with was, in my view, so much *less* ... so much less than the book, and so much less than it could have been.
And, yeah, it was doubly disappointing because it was Miyazaki and I haven't felt in the past that his movies had so much trouble walking the line of realistic vs. sentimental. Have you seen Porco Rosso? Now why couldn't this movie have had the same funny-serious-cynical-fairy-tale tone as that one? Sigh... I remember finding out that Studio Ghibli was going to do the movie, and being all excited because I thought that it would be done *right* -- even if it didn't match the book very well, it would be a really good movie. But I didn't really like the movie, and that saddened me.